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Weekly Contest #208
Nora knew not to seek refuge in others, and yet this stranger—we’ll call him Louis—provided some kind of solace lying there beside her, shoulder to shoulder, each of them with their arms wrapped around a blue pillow. She was happy to lie here in his company, in his bed, for there was no family to hold her, no friends, no partner, and the only semblance of love she’d ever found was in the arms of men with ulterior motives; and so, she willingly mistook mud for chocolate, weeds for flowers, and blood for wine. But this time, she mightn’t hav...
Weekly Contest #207
It is here in a lamplit living room, surrounded by pot plants and self-help books, where we meet our protagonist, Marta. She sits in a cloud of cigarette smoke, ashing it every few tokes in a red metal tray painted with gold elephants. Her daughter brought it back from Thailand—another toke of her cigarette—and, as always, had thought of her. Thank goodness someone does, otherwise she might go mad; no amount of pot plants and self-help books can compensate for a child’s love. They do, however, silence the scream of solitude for a while. She ...
Weekly Contest #206
We don’t know what’s the matter with me, but we know why I’m in bed and not at work. I lie here staring up at the white gotelé ceiling, but I can’t be sure it’s white; I can’t be sure of anything, really. Maybe the ceiling is like the green curtains that still glow purple no matter how hard I look; I could glare a hole through these dreadful, frenetic curtains, and they would never be green. I glance up at the lifeless clock on the wall, the limp hands forever indicating six o’clock. I don’t know why I still look, why I anticipate change. H...
Weekly Contest #205
The year is 2027 and Maureen finds herself back in Rishikesh, back on the shore by the Ganges, with yet another pouch of rice. A cow sleeps on the sand a few metres away and a scruffy, white dog—that’s been following her since she left the astrologist’s—sits beside her. She’s quite sure it’s a stray and yet it has no fleas or injuries and is smiling up at her with an endearing silliness, its tongue dangling from the side of its mouth as it smile-pants. There’s a smudge of orange dust on its forehead, the orange glow of the sunset in its spar...
Weekly Contest #204
White walls, white chairs, white gowns, white noise. Melissa sat cross-legged on a single bed, on cool, silk sheets, sea surf emanating from a little grey speaker on the bedside table. A long glass of water sat atop it, clear and pure, enclosing the white walls, chairs, gowns in this reflective and rippling universe. Melissa took a sip. “Are you sleepy?” asked Nora. Melissa nodded, adjusting her eye mask. “Yield. We need you in Theta to bypass the left hemisphere.” Nora leaned back in her chair, running a bare foot through the flu...
Weekly Contest #203
The wooden door creaked open, and Nora stepped out into the sun, the sand, the surrealism. The sand didn’t vanish beneath her flip flops, her bikini didn’t blow away in the wind, and Dolores didn’t melt into a puddle; she was definitely still there, with that frozen smile and those frosty eyes.“Oh, orange!” said Dolores, eyeing Nora’s bikini. “It took me a while to figure out my tones, too.”Nora wrapped her towel around her, taking in Dolores’ brown bikini, her glowing, olive skin. What was her name again?Nora didn’t try to fill the silence....
Weekly Contest #202
Cognitive dissonance was not something with which they were familiar. Nothing, never, had ever challenged their reality; nothing, never, had ever fused them thus; and nothing, never, had ever made them friends. Blanche and Noir sat across from one another, in this pink room, this pink space, with two wine glasses filled with red. Drunk, brain fog, throbbing heads. What was real, what wasn’t? What a mess, cognitive dissonance. “He didn’t love her,” said Noir, sipping at his wine. “He must have,” said Blanche, twirling a strand of blonde hair ...
Weekly Contest #201
The click of a mouse filled the silence, the screen light filled the dark, the purpose filled the void. Nora’s blank face was awash with a pool of blue light, her pupils as small as the eye of a needle. Her irises swelled with colour, her glassy eyes reflecting her avatar who bobbed back and forth on the screen. Right click. Collect confetti. “Are you doing the Green Orcas quest?” The white text appeared above a familiar avatar, an avatar with a saturated green cape: barbieblows94. “I am,” typed Nora, the white text filling the silent sp...
Weekly Contest #200
Maggie was never a particularly bad girl, but she had, at an early age, discovered that she could speak reality into existence, that words had weight. “Could you pass me the apricot jam?” she said, her voice hoarse with age. Her wrinkled hands caressed the knife, her index finger firm against its long silver spine. She returned it to the jar where it clattered against the glass lip. Crunch, breadcrumbs. “Truth is,” she said with a mouthful of toast, “I made it all up.” She r...
Weekly Contest #190
Would it be clichéd to say the past stalks me like a shadow? Would my readers groan? Would you protest? Could I say it tucks itself into the folds of the dark each time I turn around to confront it? like being trailed by a figure in a trench coat, two lamp-posts back. How else might I articulate this pervasive lack of closure? And can a lack of anything really be pervasive? And how is it that absence can feel so present? I believed five years had made a difference, but now I twiddle my thumbs and wonder if my progress has been make-believe...
Weekly Contest #189
A cloud of steam rises from the whistling coals as Zhen Chao screws the lid onto his water bottle. He returns to the wooden bench, folding his long legs beneath him, and the sizzle slowly dies away like the distant hiss of crickets. A drop of sweat trickles down his neck where it finds his chest, fine black hair dotted with white bean sprouts; his father also went grey in his thirties. In order to give you this life, he’d say, which was his excuse for everything, for his absence, further justified by his consistent return every Spring Festiv...
Weekly Contest #187
A small crowd gathers on a flight of stairs by the river, by the food carts and their blinding white lights; the ping of a bottlecap can be heard as it hits the pavement, the shrill of gas as a can is opened, and the crumple of a plastic chopstick wrapper. A man in his twenties stands with his back to the river, a microphone before him. The streetlight paints his black hair with white streaks like rivulets, like moonlit water. He cradles his guitar lightly in his arms, rocks it back and forth as though singing it to sleep, and as his fingers...
Weekly Contest #186
“I asked for raspberry.” “Not strawberry?” “Yeah, nah.” “¿Cómo?” “It means—fuck, I can’t open the bloody thi—” “Give it here, you’re hopeless.” “It means that—thanks, how’d you do that?—that you can’t read a shopping list.” “You wrote strawberry.” “Get the list, Alex. Look, r-a-s-p—” “And that’s supposedly an ‘r’ back in Australia?” “It would be if it weren’t for the coffee ring. I wonder how that got there.” “I think it has more to do with your handwriting.” “Or your aversion to coaste—fuck!” “¡Joder! Don’t move!” “I’m—” “Nora, don’t move....
Weekly Contest #185
The sun lies, the sun lies as the breeze creeps up my legs, my thighs. It’s winter here, a sunny winter, and I’m both warm and cold inside. “It’s mine, and you can’t have it,” I say. He leans in, his elbow on the oily table, on the breadcrumbs. “I feel so at home in my own skin,” I say. Pause. He doesn’t try to fill the silence but watches me grapple with words in my head: a girl grasping at dandelion clocks. “Es tan mía,” I say. He smiles at this last part. I smile a closed smile in return; I smile because he does. It’s not ...
Weekly Contest #184
My laughter is louder than theirs, my smile wider; but I’m the only one who sees the light bend, sees it flicker. It’s another Friday night and the queue stretches out before us, a duplicate code of drunken smiles, smudged mascara, windblown hair: copy, paste, copy, paste, copies. “I missed you,” says Alicia, moving in for an embrace. I see the glitch behind her eyes, feel it in her feather touch as her arms brush over me, move through me, as though we were mere light, flickering dust particles at most. I buffer a moment. “How was Budapest...
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